Joint MIMO System Design of Integrated Communication and Radar for UAV Operation

This paper investigates a joint multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) integrated communication and radar framework for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) operations. Inspired by Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) and Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) technologies, the proposed framework combines communication and radar sensing functions. A multi-objective optimization problem is formulated to address the MIMO beamforming (BF) and power allocation for both communication and radar signals, aiming to achieve an optimal trade-off between communication and radar performance. To solve this problem, an efficient algorithm is developed using Successive Convex Approximation (SCA) methods. Numerical results show that the proposed framework outperforms conventional baseline models, by simultaneously enhancing both communication quality and radar sensing capabilities for UAV operations.